Gone
by Stormfire76
Summary: It's a regular day in New Rome. Gwen is running her coffee shop, Reyna is boxing, Hazel is looking for Arion, Katie is worrying about other people . . . and Percy Jackson is missing (again). Random post-series Percabeth fluff.


**So this is just a random Percabeth oneshot that I wrote ages ago . . . And since there's only ONE MONTH LEFT UNTIL THE HOUSE OF HADES, I figured, what _better_ time to post a random Percabeth oneshot than now?**

**Hope you enjoy! :)**

**Disclaimer: Roses are red, violets are blue, I don't own PJO, and neither do you. (Unless for some crazy reason RR is reading this . . . In which case, HI RICK RIORDAN I'M A HUGE FAN!) XP**

* * *

**Gone**

The woman sat at her usual table in the coffee shop, drinking her usual coffee and reading interesting sections of her usual newspaper. When she'd finished, she took a few brightly colored pages out of the stack and dropped the rest in the coffee shop's recycling bin. Then she walked up to the woman taking orders at the counter. "Hi, Gwen," the blond woman said. "The coffee was great. Could I have another to go?"

"The same every morning," Gwen laughed, already filling a paper cup. "The usual coffee, the usual news, the usual table, the usual cup to go. When are you going to switch it up a little?" She capped the cup and handed it to the other woman.

"Oh, you know when," the woman smiled.

Gwen's laugh faded. "You're _still_ waiting for him? Even after all this time?"

The woman shrugged. "Always." She took a sip of her coffee-to-go and sighed with pleasure. "I'll need this later. Thanks, Gwen." She turned to walk away.

"Wait!" Gwen called out before she could leave the store. "You haven't been out in _ages_. Bowling. Tonight at five. You, me, Reyna, Hazel, and Katie."

"Reyna?" the woman said in surprise. "She's back?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Leo and Reyna got back _hours_ ago, Annabeth. It's old news. You really _do_ need to get out more."

Annabeth grinned. "Then sure. I'll go bowling. Out in Berkeley?"

Gwen snorted. "Have to, now that Frank wrecked the one down the street. I mean, honestly, did he _have_ to change to elephant form and ram the monster into _that_ building? And what are the new praetors thinking, considering the rebuilding of our bowling alley to be too 'costly and unnecessary'? Bowling alleys are _so_ necessary!"

Laughing, Annabeth backed out of the store, waving. "I'll meet you guys here at five. See you then, Gwennie!"

Gwen adopted a mock glare, but before she could counter, Annabeth was gone. Under her breath, she muttered in a singsong voice, "Can't wait, _Annie_!" Then a new customer walked up to the register and cleared his throat. Blushing deep red, Gwen managed to get out her generic "Hello, welcome to Koffay. How may I help you?" but couldn't meet his eyes.

"What? Don't recognize me, _Gwennie_?"

Gwen automatically started a response before she looked up. "How dare you-" Then she registered who was in front of her. "Bobby!"

* * *

New Rome was cold this time of year. They didn't have year-round climate control like Half-Blood, but somehow, Annabeth liked it. It was nice not being able to predict the weather each day as being sunny and gorgeous. _After all, variety _is_ the spice of life_, she thought to herself. Then, realizing what she'd just thought, she laughed out loud. "I guess my life just isn't very spicy, then," she murmured.

"Did someone say spicy?" The guy who'd suddenly appeared directly in front of Annabeth never seemed to change. He still had the same crazy curly hair, the same crazy wild eyes, the same crazy white grin, and the same crazy grease-stained clothes. Oh yes, and the tool belt. One must not forget the tool belt.

"Hello, Leo." Annabeth rolled her eyes but couldn't quite manage to hide her smile. "What do you want?"

Leo kept talking as if he hadn't heard her. "Because, if you want spicy, I can make very hot tacos with lots of jalapenos. You know, I set up Leo's Taco Garage in Berkeley because the crowd there seemed more receptive to my Mexican flair, and I heard you were going bowling there later, so if you want to drop by, I'll give you 10% off for being New Rome residents, you could get some spicy tacos and then I think your life would be very spicy and-"

Annabeth stopped him gently. "Leo, I do not want to hear an hour-long pitch about why I should go to your restaurant. I know the tacos are delicious. We'll probably end up there anyway, so I do not need the advertising. Now take your comics and go bug your girlfriend or something."

Leo scratched his head. "She's… well, Reyna's not my girlfriend anymore."

Annabeth actually stepped back in shock. She was supposed to be the smart one, but she'd never seen _this_ coming. Opposites usually worked out pretty well – just look at her and Percy… although, maybe they weren't the best example… "Really? What went wrong?"

"Wrong? Oh, nothing. I proposed. She said yes. She's my fiancée now!"

She laughed. "Leo, that's great! I knew you were going on some sort of long vacation, but I had no idea…"

"That the whole thing was one of my grand master schemes and I was planning on asking her the entire time? Yeah, it was. I was actually surprised she didn't figure it out herself. But you know, that's cool, all's well that ends well and all."

"That's great, Leo," she said again, "but I've got to go, so here are your comics and I'll see you later and you can tell me all about it, okay?" He was hilarious, but when the ADHD guy got going…

"Oh. Right. Gotta stick to your schedules and all… (No spice…) Yeah, got it. Thanks for the comics! Bye!" And he was gone just as fast as he'd come.

Annabeth raised an eyebrow, took another sip of coffee, and kept walking. "Bye…"

* * *

She spent her work day walking all over New Rome, making sure the buildings were in good condition, drinking her coffee-to-go to stay warm, and writing down notes about possible remodels and renovations and refurbishing and repairs. Then she ran into Emma, one of Camp Jupiter's seventeen-year-old praetors, and asked her to reconsider the decision made about New Rome's bowling alley. Annabeth's opinions carried a lot of weight. Emma promised to think about it.

By about three-thirty, Annabeth had looked at half of the city's buildings and was planning to check on the other half the next day. Satisfied with her work, she walked home to change and get ready to bowl. Yes, bowling was old-school, and yes, it was usually for kids, but it was fun and competitive and somehow, it had become her and her friends' go-to outing. Besides, it was always funny to see the looks on people's faces when they realized that a bunch of women in their twenties went bowling instead of clubbing or partying or enjoying other, normal, stupid (in Annabeth's opinion) activities.

This was what was running through her mind as she unlocked the door to her third-floor apartment, dropped her keys by the front door, and checked her landline phone (she'd broken her cell phone, and since they were still a bad idea, even now, she hadn't gotten a new one yet) for messages. There were four. She clicked play.

"Hey, Annabeth, it's Gwen… I'm still mad at you for calling me 'Gwennie', but that's not the reason I have to cancel. Bobby's back! I'm sorry; I know bowling was my idea in the first place. If you want, I'm sure he'd understand if I went anyway. Call me back. Thanks! Bye." Annabeth smiled. Gwen hadn't seen Bobby in a week – he'd been at Camp Half-Blood helping Hermes's cabin out with something or other. She didn't mind her canceling at all. In fact, Annabeth picked up the phone and was about to tell her so… but she decided to listen to the other messages first.

"Hey, Annabeth, it's Hazel. Look, I know we were going to go bowling tonight, but Emma just told me that Arion escaped from the stables _again_. Is it okay if I skip and go find him? I'm so sorry; I keep telling him to stay put, but he's just _so_ free-spirited. Call me back. Thanks! Bye." Annabeth knew how much Hazel's horse meant to her. Percy had felt – no, _feels_ – the same way about Blackjack. She guessed that it would just be her, Reyna, and Katie tonight. Then she played the next message.

"Hey, Annabeth, it's Reyna. Gwen told me you guys were going bowling, and I would really love to, but I'm still kind of freaking out about the whole engagement thing – oh, I didn't tell you yet, did I? Leo proposed! But anyways, I'm in the training room right now, making some punching bags very miserable, and I don't think I'm ready for a girls' night out just yet, because then I'd have to tell you guys all about what happened and I'm still processing it myself. Ugh. Sorry. Some other time, okay? Come talk to me; my phone's dying so it won't work. Thanks! Bye." She sighed, a little depressed at the thought of only two for bowling. But she couldn't be mad at Reyna. She remembered the way she'd felt after her Seaweed Brain had proposed… Then she looked down at the blinking red light that told her she still had one message to go. With her luck, Katie was probably going to bail on her too. Still, though, Annabeth had to know for sure. She hit play once again.

"Hey, Annabeth, it's-" She dropped the phone in shock. Then, after recovering a little, she quickly picked it up again, listened to the message three times, and ran out the door.

* * *

It was a quarter to five, and no one had heard back from Annabeth. Katie, her best friend of all, was the most worried, as she hadn't canceled on her and didn't know what was going on. So she pulled Reyna away from her punching bag, grabbed Hazel before she could go look for Arion, and held an emergency meeting at Gwen's Koffay shop.

"I don't know where Annabeth is," Katie said frankly, "and from the looks on your faces, I don't think you do either."

The other three looked at each other hesitantly. Then Gwen spoke up. "Well, we all couldn't make it, for various reasons, so maybe she was mad and stomped off to go fight a monster or something."

Katie shook her head. "_I_ didn't cancel! She would've called me if she had decided to have some crazy adventure instead of going bowling. Besides, Annabeth doesn't _have_ angry impulses to 'go fight a monster'. She's Athena's daughter, rational to the end! No, that's not it."

Hazel shrugged. "Maybe she's just cooking or something and forgot the time."

Katie shook her head again, trying not to laugh. "_Cooking_? _Annabeth_? Besides, I knocked on her apartment door and she didn't answer. That's not like her either. Not to mention that you all told her to call you back or talk to you or whatever. She should've done that, not disappeared off the face of the earth."

An uneasy silence settled after Katie mentioned disappearing off the face of the earth. With the way a demigod's life could go, none of them were completely sure that that wasn't what had happened. Then, finally, Gwen spoke up again. "Maybe she's just really absorbed in one of the projects on Daedalus's laptop and isn't paying attention to the outside world."

They all smiled at that. "Now _that_ sounds like Annabeth," Reyna agreed. "Anyway, she shows up here every morning at exactly 8:23, right, Gwen?"

Gwen rolled her eyes. "_Every_ morning."

"So, if she's here, then we can all yell at her for making us worry. If she's not, then we _can _worry."

Katie nodded resolutely. "Sounds like a plan." Then she paused, hesitated, and added, "She'll be here… right?"

"Of _course_ she will," Hazel promised. "Now are we done here? I've really got to go find my horse."

"Yeah, go ahead," Katie told her. "And Reyna, you can go back to beating up helpless punching bags. Gwen, I've got to talk to you about something else."

Gwen raised an eyebrow. "Now what?"

Katie groaned. "Travis is giving me a _surprise_ tomorrow. I need you to promise me that it won't be something dangerous or terrifying."

Gwen laughed. "I can't do that." They all knew how the Stolls could be. "But I _can_ give you a free cup of coffee and make it _really_ strong, if you know what I mean." She winked.

"You're a lifesaver, Gwen," Katie sighed. They walked inside.

* * *

Katie sat on Gwen's counter, glaring at anyone who looked like they _might_ tell her to get off. Gwen stood beside her at the register, glancing up at Katie every once in a while. "What time is it now, Gwen?"

"8:24."

"She's late!" Katie wailed. "Something must be wrong!"

Gwen sighed. "Katie, it's one minute. Maybe Annabeth stayed up late, reading stuff on that laptop. Maybe she slept in. Maybe she's running here right now."

"No, I _know_ Annabeth," Katie insisted. "She's _never_ late!"

"Give her ten minutes, Katie. _Then_ you can start panicking."

"What time is it now?"

"8:26."

"All right. She's got ten minutes." They waited. "What time is it now?"

"Relax, Katie! It's only a minute later!"

"Nine to go." A pause. "What time is it now?"

"Oh my gods, Katie! _Just take the watch already_!"

A customer walked nervously up to the counter. Gwen put on her best I'm-so-sorry-about-my-ridiculous-friend-just-ignor e-her smile. "Hello, welcome to Koffay. How may I help you?"

"Er, I'll have a frozen vanilla latte with whipped cream, a peppermint mocha with extra chocolate syrup and no whipped cream – sorry, this could take a while, I'm ordering for my entire office…"

"Not a problem, sir. Keep going."

Eight other coffee orders and close to forty _denarii_ later… "It's 8:36, Gwen! I'm panicking!" Katie cried. She hopped off the counter and ran out of the store.

The customer blinked. "I'm sorry for asking… but what is she doing?"

Gwen put on her best it's-really-none-of-your-business-but-I'll-tell-yo u-anyway-because-I'm-a-polite-girl smile. "Oh, she's just worried about a friend of ours who's running a bit late. Don't worry about it. Now, these coffees will just take a minute…"

Her next customer was tall, with the longest black hair Gwen had ever seen on a guy. His side swept bangs almost completely hid his eyes, so she couldn't see what color they were. She had no idea who the guy was, but he seemed oddly familiar… So instead of her generic welcome, she said, "Do I know you from somewhere?"

"I'm sure you do," the guy smiled. Gwen waited for more, but he didn't seem to want to elaborate. Eventually, she sighed and continued.

"What would you like?"

"Two coffees but with half hot chocolate and a little milk. Oh, and put mounds of whipped cream on one," he added with a grin.

Gwen tilted her head to one side. "Funny, that's exactly what my friend gets here every morning… well, not the whipped cream, and she only gets one coffee, but everything else is the same."

The guy shrugged. "I don't know about that. I'm just ordering for me and my fiancée."

"Fiancée?" Gwen asked in surprise. "But I know everyone around here who's getting married… _Are_ you from around here?"

He laughed at that. "Definitely not. But I think of this place as my home. Or as one of my homes, anyway. Now, do you take drachmas, Gwen, or do I need to pay with mortal cash?"

Gwen almost questioned him again, ("You're Greek? You know my name? What do you mean, 'one of your homes'?"), but she held herself back and changed at the last minute to, "Mortal cash, please."

"Figures." He paid her, she made him his coffees, and he turned to walk out the back door. That's when she saw the pen sticking out of his back pocket.

"_Percy Jackson?_"

He looked back and grinned. "Took you long enough." And of course, at that very moment, Annabeth walked in. She wasn't gone after all.

* * *

"_Annie_!" Gwen said exasperatedly.

"_Gwennie_!" Annabeth laughed back.

"This is not funny, Annabeth! Katie's been freaking out! She thought you were abducted by aliens or something when you didn't come on time!"

She smiled. "I told you I would switch things up when Percy came back. Well, he's back. And I did. Don't worry, I saw Katie on my way over and assured her that aliens hadn't abducted me. It's okay."

Gwen shook her head, but couldn't manage to be mad at her. "So yesterday… when we couldn't get a hold of you…"

Annabeth shrugged. "Percy called me, left a message." She paused to glare at him lovingly. "It was about _time_." Then she looked back at Gwen and smiled again. "What did you expect me to do, go find all of you and _explain_ that I was leaving to go meet my fiancé who I hadn't seen for _two freaking years_? That would've taken _way_ too long. I just kind of dropped everything and ran."

Now Gwen was mad at Percy. "You _called_ her and _left a message_? You didn't go to her apartment and _meet_ her?"

"Hey, I had a good reason!" Percy said defensively. "I was kind of busy fighting twenty gryphons, thirty _dracaenae_, nine _empousae_, and about four freaking _sea monsters_! Or was it five? Six? I wasn't really _counting_!"

Annabeth rolled her eyes. "You should've seen the amount of nectar and ambrosia I had to give him. It's a miracle he didn't burn to ashes."

"Yeah, I think I'm building up resistance to the mortal-killing qualities of that stuff. I can't believe I couldn't even eat _one square_ of ambrosia when I was twelve," Percy grinned.

Gwen blinked slowly. "Anyway… if you were fighting sea monsters, how did you use a phone?"

"Oh, when I called her, I was only fighting the _empousae_, _dracaenae_, and gryphons."

"Only…? Er… Continue."

Percy scratched his head. "When you later add four or five or six sea monsters to that, yes, it is _only_. Anyway, I was able to find a pay phone and work it with one hand while I killed some stuff with the other. It was a good thing I kept my message short. As soon as I finished, an _empousae_ threw a fireball at me. When I ducked, it… well, it destroyed the pay phone. That wasn't the worst thing I destroyed that day. Um… I figure you haven't read the paper yet?"

"No…"

"Great! You should just skip it," Percy told her. "There's nothing exciting in it, really."

"Okay. I won't read it." Annabeth could tell that Gwen was planning on reading it the moment Percy left.

"I didn't," she said casually.

Gwen raised an eyebrow. "_Annabeth Chase didn't read her morning newspaper?_"

She shrugged. "I told you, now that Seaweed Brain's back I'm switching things up. Leo will be glad to know that my life is spicy again."

Percy looked at her in confusion. "You know… I'm not even going to ask."

"Leo's Taco Garage actually exists now," she told him as an explanation. "It's not bad. You've missed a lot over the past two years."

He smiled at her. "Then I guess you'll just have to catch me up."

"I would love to know what you've been up to, Percy," Gwen interrupted, "but you guys are holding up my line." Annabeth turned and blushed when she saw the line of ten people glaring at the pair of them. "Why don't you get a table, and Annie, you can tell me all about it later?"

"Sure thing, Gwennie," Annabeth smirked. "Let's go, Seaweed Brain."

As she walked away, she could hear Gwen muttering. "She always has to have the last word, doesn't she? Oh, hello, welcome to Koffay. How may I help you?"

* * *

"…And that's why I've been MIA the last two years."

Annabeth sat there for a few minutes, sipping her coffee, smiling at the way Percy had managed to get whipped cream all over his face, and trying to take it all in. Finally, she said, "…I see why you had to miss my last two birthdays, and I forgive you."

He smiled. "I'm glad. And I also forgive you for missing mine."

"I didn't know where you were, Seaweed Brain!" Annabeth said indignantly.

"That's why I forgive you. Although I was never really mad at you in the first place."

She got up and pulled her chair closer to him; then she sat back down and leaned her head on his shoulder. He entwined his fingers with hers. "Me neither," she smiled. They were quiet for a few moments, just enjoying each other's company. After a while, she said, "You know, everyone else thought you were either dead or on Calypso's island… with Calypso, and I would never see you again. But I knew. I knew you weren't gone. You've been missing so many times… when you blew up Mt. Saint Helens, when Hera stole you and your memories, when Gaea kidnapped you and tried to get you to join the giants…"

He grinned. "Such fond memories."

She punched him gently. "Let me finish. Anyways, you've been missing – and driving me crazy – more times than I could count, and each time, I've been worried that you wouldn't come back. But you always did. This time… I figured I'd have a little faith." She kissed his cheek. "Thanks for not letting me down."

"Aw, what kind of kiss is that? We have two years of kisses to make up for!" Percy complained. Then he gave her a "real" kiss, and she put her hand on his cheek and kissed him back. When they pulled apart, Percy rested his forehead on hers and looked her in the eye, smiling. "Thanks for having a little faith. And, just in case something like this ever happens again – because I am a demigod, a child of one of the Big Three, and part of two different Great Prophecies – I want you to know that I will never, ever, ever, _ever_ be truly gone."

"Promise me?"

"I'll do you one better. I swear it on the Styx. I'll never be gone." He grinned. "Just… delayed."

* * *

**Like I said, totally random. :P Hope you enjoyed it anyway!**

**Reviews are appreciated! :)**


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